All Things Considered

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Religious affairs programme, tackling thorny issues in a thought-provoking manner

Religious affairs programme, tackling the thornier issues of the day in a thought-provoking manner

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All Things Considered: St David 900: The Well-Travelled Saint

St David 900: 1 - The Well-Travelled Saint

St David 900: The Well-Travelled Saint

BBC Radio Wales - All Things Considered, St David 900: The Well-Travelled Saint

Sarah Rowland-Jones investigates whether St David could have travelled to Jerusalem.

Sarah Rowland-Jones investigates the life of St David. Who was he really? And is it possible that he actually made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a city which he longed to see?

This year marks 900 years since St David’s place at the centre of Welsh identity was given international recognition by Pope Callixtus II. Two pilgrimages to St Davids, it was pronounced, were equivalent to one to Rome; a later version of this claims that three pilgrimages to the Pembrokeshire cathedral were equivalent to one pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But who really was St David, and what does he mean to us in 21st century Wales?

For BBC Radio Wales, All Things Considered and Celebration are marking this anniversary during the seven weeks from St David’s Day to Easter. We’re exploring the locations connected with his story to understand what motivated him, how he’s been seen across the centuries, and what he means to us now. We’ll reflect themes linked to St David, and hear from contemporary pilgrims following in his footsteps, and we’ll worship as David did.

David’s life and the stories which came to be told about him were from the very beginning shaped by an international dimension: David was given his status because of a relationship with Rome; he acquired his spiritual purpose because of a relationship with Jerusalem; his birth and upbringing involved a relationship with Brittany; while his spiritual leadership involved relationship with the whole island of Britain. 

In this programme Sarah Rowland-Jones investigates some deeper connections between our patron saint and the Holy City. The earliest biography of St David, written 500 years after his death, claimed that David travelled to Jerusalem and met the Patriarch, who declared him archbishop of all the the Britons. This may sound fanciful, but there is an abundance of evidence that early Christians actually did make that arduous journey to the Holy Land - not least from Britain. 

Not only that, David's famously austere monastic lifestyle is certainly indebted to the example set by the desert fathers, who lived in Egypt  - a connection that David's earliest biographer, Rhigyfarch, explicitly acknowledges. Visiting the Garden of Gethsemane and the Old City of Jerusalem, Sarah searches for the historical context for a saint about whom so much has been written, but about whom so little is known for certain.

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